Experience and conjecture

Use in the book

At II.107.1, the appeal to conjecture checks the authority of mining knowledge itself. Even Lazarus Ercker, invoked as a knowledgeable figure, cannot remove the limits imposed by an unseen process. At II.108.1, practical workers are said to approach the matter more closely through observation. Their differences nevertheless produce multiple accounts and ways of accomplishing the magistery.

The reported fire accident at II.112.1 supplies a carefully bounded example. Carelessness broke vessels, and the author saw black, whitish and yellow flowers. This is a report of appearances after an operation failed. It can support the claim that colours arise and require interpretation. It cannot by itself establish a sequence in which lead becomes tin, silver, copper, iron and finally gold. The lexicon preserves the difference between the reported event and the larger model placed around it.¹¹⁶

The medicinal discussion makes another division. At II.180.2, the author describes personal experience with the lowest degree and with diseases he regards as curable by ordinary pharmaceutical means. The higher degrees are discussed through expectations, other writers and more expansive promises. The autobiographical statement should not be extended to every subsequent effect, including transmutation or the perfection of stones.

There is also a practical limit to the reader's own ability to test these claims from the book. The author declines to state every manipulation. The reader can examine his theory and compare passages, but cannot reconstruct a complete procedure merely by turning each image into a laboratory instruction. Recognizing conjecture in the text is consequently part of accurate reading, not a dismissal of every practical observation it contains.

The sensory examples in the definition of rainwater require the same care. Transparency is offered as something visible: one can see into water. The capacity to contain all colours is explained through reported effects of repeated distillation and drying, and even of rain on glass exposed to the sun (I.019.1; I.021.1). These examples do not have identical scope. Seeing through a sample supports a statement about its appearance. Seeing colours after a treatment enters a larger inference about powers concealed in the matter. The author brings both into his definition, but the reader need not confuse the immediate appearance with the entire account of universal capacity. This distinction allows the natural examples to be read closely without either dismissing their observations or silently granting every conclusion the author draws from them.

The shape of the medicine argument adds another level. Particular plants are said to have effects on different parts or functions of the body; rainwater and especially the subject and medicine are then credited with those powers collectively (II.074.2). This is an inference within a universal causal theory. The later personal experience passage does not independently test every step of that earlier inference. The reader should therefore connect the two discussions while preserving their different tasks: one explains why a universal medicine could exist in the author's model, while the other asserts some practical benefit at a specified degree. Evidence is distributed across the argument rather than concentrated in one conclusive experiment. The lexicon's references allow that distribution to be reconstructed. They also explain why the words proved, experienced and testified should remain attached to their particular claims, speakers and contexts whenever they appear.

Places to read

1. Part II · II.107.1; II.108.12Conjectural knowledge of mines and the comparative access of working alchemists.
2. Part II · II.112.1An accident, colours and the limits of the resulting inference.
3. Part II · II.180.2; II.181.1; II.183.123Personal medical experience distinguished from higher-degree expectations and testimony.
4. Part II · II.237.1; II.241.12The practical limits of disclosure.

Translation

The Latin phrase scientiâ conjecturali is rendered as conjectural science. Science here names an organized account rather than a guarantee of experimental certainty. Observation is kept where the source uses the term. Where the author claims personal experience, the English should identify him as the speaker rather than transform the report into an impersonal fact.

Cautions

Neither old age nor confident wording turns a reported observation into a replicated modern result. Equally, a concession of conjecture in one discussion should not be used to erase the separate observations and distinctions the author actually records.

scientiâ conjecturali

scientiâ conjecturali — conjectural science in an inflected Latin phrase. II.107.1.

observation

observation — observation. II.108.1.